With recent health care changes, specifically the Affordable Care Act, negotiation skills will be tremendous value to medical professionals, administrators, and other stakeholders in the health care sector.

Recognizing the importance of negotiation, medical schools are starting to invest in communication training for students. A recent article by Dhruv Khullar in the NY Times Health Blog, Teaching Doctors the Art of Negotiation discusses how doctors negotiation on a daily basis, with both patients and colleagues and should be offered classes in negotiation training just as law, business and public policy schools do.

In this context, “negotiation is about exploring underlying interests and positions to bring parties together in a constructive way. It’s about creative, innovative thinking to create lasting value and forge strong professional relationships. It’s about investigating what is behind positions that may seem irrational at first to understand the problem behind the problem.”

To read the full article, click here